I have been skeptical about this battery and its ability to jumpstart the car. However, after testing it for a few weeks I am now a believer: It really delivers on its premise. I have not tested it with the car, but with my John Deere lawn mower. It has a bad battery that needs replacing, but I haven’t had the time to do so this year. Instead I’ve been jump starting it using one of the large conventional jump starter batteries. It got the job done, but the setup was pretty unwieldy. Now with this much smaller and much more convenient battery I was able to do it really quickly and easily. I was amazed that a battery of this size can do such a thing, and do it repeatedly. That in and of itself makes it a really worthwhile investment. However, it also works as a conventional backup charger for all of your small electronic devices.

At 10,000 mAh this is a pretty medium sized battery. In terms of capacity it is certainly smaller than most batteries these days, yet it is much bulkier than almost all of them. This is not a very convenient portable battery to have around. I’ve tested it with several small and medium electronic devices, which I had previously completely depleted. I was able to fully charge first generation iPad and iPhone 4S from a single charged Bestek battery. I have not tested it with the latest generation iPad Air, but my guess would be that this battery would be able to fully charge it.

The battery comes with a multi-extension USB charging cable. It has attachments for mini USB, micro USB, Apple 30 pin, and Apple Lightning. I’ve tested all of them, and they all seem to be working as expected with my devices. However, Apple tends to change their internal USB compatibility on a somewhat regular basis, so the cable may not work with a later version of their products. Just one thing to keep in mind.

Unlike some other similar multipurpose external batteries, this one doesn’t come with connectors and ability to charge a laptop. Unless, of course, your laptop supports USB charging (I’m looking at you, the latest MacBook). This is not a major inconvenience for me, since I’ve never really used any of these external batteries for laptop charging. However, if this is an option that you need I would recommend looking into some other more versatile power banks.

This is a beautifully made external battery. It is, as you would expect it, fairly large and heavy – it weighs about 14 ounces. It is a very convenient battery to keep around in an emergency, but I do wish it had a higher capacity. I intend to keep it with me in my car from now on though.

**** Product provided for review purposes. ****